Painful Lessons

Hello, my fellow thinkers, I hope this day you are spending it joyfully and well with your loved ones—as for me I am sitting here in my living room looking between the keys of my laptop and watching the water drift softly on the side of my yard as I evaluate my life.

Has a friend or a loved one ever confront you saying you’re not the same person you used to be? I have, and now I am wondering what changed.

In looking back on my last blogs between trust, fear, and battle, it’s uncanny how my life evolved from a strong and fearless person to a weak and fearful one and ask myself, “How in the world, did I get here?”

Many of you will say, “You probably put yourself there!” Not nice by the way!

Life is not always a straight and narrow one; there will be bumps, twists, and turns in the roads which can be confusing.

Then there’s one voice of reason that tells you to “stand and wake up this is not you” and you sit up wondering, “What is wrong with me?”

People will judge, making you feel worse than you already are instead of being a source of positive influence. Not to condone but to use words to make you react and open your eyes. Negative words do hurt, and they do weaken! I’ve had my fair share of them believe me.

My thought, don’t cast the first stone if you’re without any flaws—as you don’t know what the person’s going or gone through—don’t judge if you don’t want to be judged. There’s the only one who judges, and

He sits on a throne in Heaven, and He’s aware of everything! Sorry, He’s someone no one can hide from!

Before writing my thoughts, I wrote these eight words the first five—strength, love, adversity, victory, endurance—the theme of my latest book Firefly Kaylas’ Gift and trust, fear, and battle—from the three previous blogs.

I wondered about the significance until I pulled the first letters of the five words—S.L.A.V.E—slave to what and added fear, trust, and battle to the list.

Then it hit me, “Don’t be a slave to your fears—trust for the battle is not lost!”
S-stands for Strength-you have the power to overcome;
L-stands for Love-as in yourself because you can’t love others until you love yourself first;
A-stands for Adversity-we all will face hard times and harsh criticisms;
V-stands for Victory-believe that you will come out of the quicksand holding you prisoner;
E-stands for Endurance-when we fight through the battle—trust that you will become the victor!

Wow just wow! I didn’t know exactly what these eight words were going to mean until I wrote them out!

It has to be the Man upstairs telling me something and shaking my behind to wake up because I didn’t know what those words were going to signify until I typed them on screen!

“Don’t be a slave to your fears—trust for the battle is not lost!”

My friends, by no means I am saying hard times won’t hit us—no. We just have to remain cognizant of when they do; we can arm ourselves with courage and come through with either our heads held up high or hide with our tales tucked in. The choice is ours.